Monday, 4 April 2011

Patriotic Front : 2011 - 16 Manifesto

We are delighted to have access to the new Patriotic Front 2011 - 2016 Manifesto. This is the hottest property in the country and I believe we are the first to make this available online. Huge thanks to our friends for getting it to us in good time to review and critique. All being well, we plan to review the manifesto chapter by chapter - a special Manifesto Analysis page has been created. That replaces the "Constitution Bill" page that is now dead in the water. We hope to publish the MMD and UPND promises in due course when they are available. We anticipate the MMD manifesto to be launched at the Convention.

8 comments:

This manifesto reads like the fifth and sixth national development plans of the Government. I thought PF was a radical left wing party. They sound no different from MMD and UPND. Quite clearly this election will not be fought on ideology but on personalities of the main protagonists

Great to see the PF tackling the damaging obsession with maize. This near mono-culture is responsible for Zambia having problems with food security, completely unnecessary given the potential of Zambia's soil.

I recently came across an article about the history of Sorghum cultivation in Zambia. Between 1962 and 1971 Zambia use to produce about 250 000 tonnes of Sorghum per annum. This production was centred in western and southern provinces were it was a staple. It is still a staple grain in Botswana. From 1971 the production rapidly declined as the Kaunda govt promoted Maize at all costs neglecting traditional staples like Cassava and Sorghum. We should have just built on what we had instead of trying to fix something that was already working. We have paid dearly for Kaunda's economic illiteracy.

It is interesting to note that PF has been performing well in increasing their popularity in the absence of a manifesto for some time. This leaves me wondering whether a good manifesto is indeed a prerequiste to winning the hearts of the masses. Is democracy suitable for countries where the majority of citizens are able to write their names and possibly count their few belongings without access to information on their obligations and rights as citizens? I would be interested to know the number of grade college graduates who have read the just flopped draft constitution. If for argument's sake the figure is below 1% wouldn't that be an indication that free education up to grade 12 as contained in the PF manifesto is inadequate as far as producing literate citizens who can seriously add value to our nation is concerned?

where this is too much poverty populist easily rise. all the have to do is remind people that their government does not care for them. even the publication of the manifesto was not a reaction to the masses but to rival political parties

You se when people including me voted for patriotic-front all what we wanted to is change. Change in the way that most companies they start behaving accordingly not like the way they do .please again iam apealing to you that the isue of minimum wage can be worked on in the shortest period of time.

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